The wind whispered soft secrets through the grass, carrying salt and sunlight across the empty shore. Mara walked slowly, bare feet brushing wet sand, carrying the weight of what was — and the lightness of what might be.
In her hand, a new journal: blank pages waiting for stories not yet told.
She sat beneath the old lighthouse, the one Jonah had painted years ago — a bright sentinel against endless sky. The paint was chipped, but its light still shone in her heart.
She opened the journal and wrote:
Love is not the ocean that drowns us.
It's the lighthouse that guides us home.
We carry it within, even when the tide pulls us under.
Atlantis is not lost — it lives inside us,
the shape of memory, the echo of a name.
And in that echo, we learn to swim.
"We didn't survive the fall, not really. We shattered in silence, drifted in the places we used to hide. But even now — after all the tides have turned and all the letters went unread — I still carry the echo of us. Not because I can't let go, but because some love stories were never meant to be forgotten. You were my lighthouse in a world that kept pulling me under. And maybe that's what love is, in the end — not a place to stay, but a light to remember when everything else goes dark."
The sun dipped low, setting the world ablaze with amber and rose.
Mara closed the journal, stood, and faced the sea.
For the first time in years, she felt something clear and true: peace.
Not the absence of pain — but the promise that even after the deepest fall, there is a way back to the surface.
And with that, she walked forward.
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THE END